


fates

by lisaong



Series: hoshido and nohr [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Rewrite, possible relationships later, spoilers for all routes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-04-25 08:09:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14374542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lisaong/pseuds/lisaong
Summary: She emerges from the war with Anankos victorious but fractured and scarred beyond repair. With nothing but a cold determination to turn back time and save her family, Corrin finds and performs a ritual that tears the fabric of the universe.While the gods allow her this one wish, the road to salvation is no less difficult.





	1. i will shatter the skies

**Author's Note:**

> this chapter is going to be extremely ooc for corrin, but I am do it intentionally.
> 
> and as always, naming works is not a forte

Hindsight, as Leo liked to say, is perfect.

But that's just as much his ghost speaking in hushed whispers as it is the phantom memories of him echoing in Corrin’s head.

There is no such thing as black and white. Xander had also told Corrin once, a long time ago.

She paints another seal, bright scarlet over crumbling stone, the cold heaviness lays thickly on her tongue as dark magic thrums and dances, brought alive by the ancient spells she’s in the middle of crafting. It might have made her flinch, once upon a time, but Corrin has long numbed herself to this, just as she’s numbed herself to the coppery tang of blood coating her fingers as she flicks her wrist, a twisted echo to her brother’s immaculate penmanship.

“Corrin.” Azura suddenly says and even just a few weeks before, she might have jerked around, looking for the singer. But her friend is gone and has been for years now, even if her phantom hovers at the edges of Corrin’s consciousness, gently rebuking, “What are you doing?”

Corrin doesn't stop, doesn't even acknowledge she heard the soft whisper because what is there to hear? Azura's dead. Corrin knows she's dead, had watched her dissolve in the Nohrian throne room only moments after King Garon had disappeared. This voice is a figment of her imagination, just like all the others.

But Azura has always been stubborn and Corrin’s imagination has always been stunningly good at conjuring up scenarios.

“Corrin.” Azura says again, “don't fall victim to Anankos’ schemes, you may have defeated his madness, but he was a tactician in his own right.”

She steps back and looks at her handiwork. It’s nowhere as neat as it would have been had Leo helped her, but he’s been dead for years now as well and she’s cut down his corpse more times than she cares to remember. Leo had tried, in the last years of his life, to teach her how to use magic, but that ended up more of a burden than anything else. There was never the time to study all the intricacies of manipulating magic in order to cast the complex spells her brother wove like breathing, not when there was so little room for error.

Surviving had been more important and as much as an extra mage would have helped, there simply wasn’t the environment to learn effectively. And now, the few simple spells are all Corrin has left of him that is still tangible.

Corrin touches bloody fingers to her pale wrist, so criss crossed with silvery scars, she’s almost forgotten what it used to look like, clean and smooth and unbroken. She drags out another symbol. It burns a little after it's finished and gleams purple-black with faint malice as she moves on to the next one. Azura has fallen silent, likely a good thing since Corrin isn’t sure what it says about her fracturing sanity that she still has the voices of dead people holding a one sided conversation in her head even years after she should have moved on from their deaths.

Takumi had been the most stubborn, after Azura apparently, and his abrasive comments on her utter determination to self destruct was part of the reason Corrin had specifically sought out the purging spell a few weeks ago in the first place. It’s not a good fix, not even a halfway decent one; she knows that phantoms of the mind are different than those of the world, but if it means peace and quiet from her greatest failures, she’ll take it.

Because even if she had killed Anankos in the end, the mad first dragon had taken the world with him first. Although Ryoma had told her to place her hope in the resilience of humanity before dying in a battle against too many soldiers to let them get away, Corrin has no interest in a world where all her siblings are dead and decaying. The other option, seeing them as soulless puppets brought to life by twisted ancient magic borne of a twisted ancient mind hellbent on blood is arguably worse. Humans can rebuild themselves without the aid of a princess hailing from three different extinct lineages, carrying a bloodline old and powerful enough to level kingdoms and warp reality. 

Even if she isn’t her father, doesn’t have the awe inspiring might that brought an entire population to its knees in worship, she has his blood. Diluted and weak as it may be compared to the original thing, Corrin is a direct descendent of a god dragon who razed entire kingdoms to the ground in a slow spiral of insanity and it is as terrifying as it is intoxicating.

(Anankos is a mad dragon who destroyed everything, but Corrin’s father had been a kind being. While she couldn't understand back then, when she’d driven Yato so deeply into the ancient body that it had splintered under her hands, Corrin understands now.

It was humanity that'd so utterly broken Anankos.)

She trails a crimson line up over her bicep, ending it with a curl on her shoulder.

Leo’s books had been useless because for all her brother’s posturing, he’d studied magic because he loved the delicacy and sensitivity of casting a spell. He’d studied war because the tactics and strategies of different kingdoms and different generals interested him. For all his prowess as a dark mage, Leo never had any interest in the dark _arts_ which had made it both more difficult and more easy to go through the remains of his library when Corrin went on a mad hunt for a solution.

She’d found the answers in King Garon’s books, patchworked together with Iago’s notes and Vallite scripture so old, the parchment had all but crumbled between her fingertips. If it weren’t so shameful, Corrin would have found it funny. Even now, she turns to the people who triggered the destruction of her world.

Those memories make her anger flare and her magic licks hungrily just under her skin. Corrin shakes sky blue hair out of her face and steadies her breathing grimly before resuming the drawing of the spell foundation.

No one will notice her absence, they’d all turned on her, like Anankos predicted they would. Once they learned what her true inheritance was, they’d all fallen away to their prejudiced fear and pointed their blades towards her. It was only in honor of her siblings that Corrin did not kill them after she defeated Anankos, Yato may have shattered to the winds like the rest of the legendary weapons during that last battle, but her blood was alive and singing with the first and last gift Anankos had ever given her. 

He’d awakened the darkness that’d slept within Corrin, sealed so long ago by her father as her mother fled the destruction of Valla. 

The humans been all too delighted to kneel to her after she’d ripped the ground apart in her rage, the smell of sheer cowardice a sour contrast to her own bitter thoughts. Corrin will never forgive them, the same way they will never look at her without accusations simmering right underneath their fragile promises of peace. She will admit now, after too long in solitude with nothing but her cold, twisted thoughts and the faces of her dead siblings, that she is probably more like her father than she realised. As much as she apparently took after her mother, Corrin is finding that her ability to love so generously yet hate so furiously might be unique to the other half of her genetic makeup.

Insanity might run in her bloodline too. Corrin doesn’t ever probe that thought for very long though.

She draws the final swirl onto her skin and looks over them quietly; they resonate slightly with the larger complex of inscriptions on the floor. Both vibrate straight to her core where her magic, her father’s magic, reaches back at them in hungry tendrils. Good. She’s drawn them all correctly then. Corrin takes a breath and looks up briefly, watching for the exact moment the celestial phenomenon aligned with an ease that is entirely inhuman before stepping forward into silver moonlight.

The room flares lavender and scarlet and Corrin fades to the sound of the ground shuddering underneath her, cracking open like a yawning mouth as everything else collapses and warps to a single point.


	2. i found the end (watch me begin again)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so bad at regular updates.

_Our magic was not meant for this._

_You will tear the universe beyond what we can repair._

_The damage is already done. We will seal you into a time where you should have died._

_You may keep your memories. We will steal their voice._

There's a blinding flash of light, a touch that is so cold, it burns, then-

_Corrin,_ someone whispers and she whirls around in a split second of furious recognition.

“You,” her voice is punched out of her in a rush of blades as her body hurtles towards the cloaked figure standing in the limbo between time with her, “you!”

Yato doesn’t exist, and Anankos is little more than a flickering ghost, glittering and beautiful. Corrin wants to destroy him, tear the thousands of tiny stars from his being like scattered diamond dust and watch him vanish into blue smoke. Because if he hadn’t existed, if he had died when he was supposed to, the war would never have happened. Valla would still be standing. Hoshido and Nohr would still be standing. Her family would still be standing, alive and breathing, not wreathed in purple smoke and corruption, blinding stumbling around the desecrated land until their decaying bodies finally give way. He lets her pummel him until her screams are wrecked with wretched sobs and her body folds on itself in quiet defeat until she’s kneeling in front of him. (weak, useless, pitiful and tired, so tired)

Mist brushes against her face, cool and soothing on Corrin’s flushed skin and an unseen force gently lifts her chin up.

_Corrin,_ Anankos says again, and his voice is sad and as tired as she feels. Corrin wants to be furious at the tone. He has no right, not when he was the one who destroyed them all, but the anger doesn’t come. All that smolders is something hollow and bitter; the fragments are sour in her chest and Corrin stops trying after only a few moments. 

( _You love so generously yet hate so furiously,_ the dying First Dragon had taunted, _you are his child, but run as you will, you are also mine._

And in the bitter end, it had been just the two of them.)

“What do you want? Why are you here?” _You cannot change my mind,_ is implied but Corrin doesn’t think Anankos is here to put an end to her mission. His soul had broken the universe in an attempt to stop his insanity infested body. To stop her for breaking the rules would be hypocritical; she was only following in his footsteps.

Anankos- her father- regards her silently for a moment, eyes like chips of crystallised sunlight before answering, _I’m past the time for apologies and too late to beg for forgiveness, but I want to help you._

His already ethereal body becomes even more faint as the stars and galaxies making up the phantom swirl and condense into a brilliant core of faceted color. Corrin narrows her eyes as suspicion creeps into her numbed brain, warring with a foreboding sense that she will need everything he has to offer if she even wants to succeed.

“What is that?” she asks as Anankos takes a step away from the shining ball, the edges of his already faint form now near invisible. Corrin takes a step forward and finds the sphere to be- 

(a clear stream under summer heat, the salty spray of crashing waves against the ocean shore, silver grey ripples breaking the mirror still surface of a moonlit lake)

Gentle, warm, alive.

She knows the answer even before Anankos answers. This is his magic. The one that had founded Valla and protected its people. (her mother had had vestiges of an ancient magic clinging to the tips of her clothing and weaved into her black, black hair. Azura’s music was shot through with the same shimmering notes, calm and cool and peaceful. she’d assumed it was by association with the royal families. now she knows better)

_It’s yours if you want it,_ Anankos murmurs as Corrin feels the space around them bending again. His magic hovers in front of her like a small star, unapologetically beautiful.

(her mother’s tear streaked smile as Corrin cuts Queen Mikoto’s body down for the last time, reaching blindly towards the tattered remains of a Vallan painting. Corrin can just make out the blue hair and shadowed smile, captured a long time ago by some unknown painter, before the remains of the burning building come crashing down)

She takes the second gift her father has ever given her and feels something untwist in her chest, mellow against the jagged edges of what’s left of her heart, as she fades to darkness.  
\--------------------- 

Xander strokes back Corrin’s silver-blue hair as his little sister whimpers, face flushed from fever. She's still shivering violently, little body almost convulsing with the sheer force of the tremors wracking through her. Even as ill as she is, Xander doesn't think it's solely from the sickness raging through her at the moment; if Nohrian winters were freezing at Castle Krakenburg, they were near unbearable at the isolated Northern Fortress. Even worse, the fortress hadn't been built with a young child in mind. As Spartan as the castle was, at least there'd been heavy tapestries and magic woven into it that took the edge off the unforgiving cold. The fortress had none of the tapestries and just the barest hint of the spells to keep the soldiers guarding the place from freezing in their sleep. Corrin, with her dislike of shoes and unfamiliarity with the sharp bite of frost had been an easy target for the same sickness that had claimed Xander’s mother so many years ago.

Xander had thought something like this would happen. Even if Father refused to tell them where their new sister was from, Xander wasn't stupid. 

(All the books about Hoshido had been burned when he was eleven, but Xander has read them enough to know what Hoshidan mannerisms looked like. Corrin, with her poised elegance and gentle steps was a near perfect fit. Even if she would have been a blaze of silver white blue in a country of reds and golds.

The point is, Xander is nearly certain Corrin is from Hoshido and Hoshido was never this bitterly cold.)

What he hadn't expected was that the sickness would take hold in Corrin like this. His mother had been frail in her last years, bled dry by a war for the King’s affection. His little sister was anything but frail and the fever should never have even found a solid foothold. But it had and it rips through her like a particularly vicious leech, draining color from her cheeks. Xander had begun to limit Leo’s visits to Corrin the moment she became ill, worried for his brother’s health. Both he and Camilla though, had started coming to the Northern Fortress more frequently, bringing their work and studies with them. 

(Father hadn't disapproved, exactly, but he hadn't been pleased either. In the coldest moments of the night, Xander wonders.

But those thoughts are banished by daybreak.)

Corrin’s coughing breaks his thoughts and Xander tries to soothe her as she squirms in discomfort, trying to breath. It lasts for a while before subsiding and Corrin burrows her head deeper into the pillow with a soft plea for ‘Mother’. Xander switches the damp cloth on her forehead helplessly, unable to do anything else for her pain.

“How is my sweet little darling?” 

There's the faint scent of roses as Camilla enters the room, pausing to stoke the fire before coming to sit next to him. She’d been the one to fortify the bare fortress into something that would keep the drafts out because he hadn't known where to start. Making a structure liveable wasn't part of the Crown Prince’s studies and he'd never had to think about it at the castle. It wasn't exactly a part of Camilla’s studies either but her instructions were precise and confident and Xander had only been getting in the way so he'd retreated after a few moments. Even now, Camilla’s fingers are steady as she presses her hand to Corrin’s cheek although the sharp inhalation that follows betrays her anxiety. Xander looks at her.

“Father refuses to allow doctors in to look after her. I've learned as much as I could from Mother’s books but-”

“I don't understand Father,” Camilla glares at him when Xander frowns at her, “He brought Corrin home. I see no reason to refuse to care for her.”

“You know Nohr is short on resources, Camilla.”

The eldest princess falls silent but her eyes are icy and they cut through the paper thin excuse as easily as they slice through him. Xander sets his jaw against the silent judgement, feeling the shadows of his own doubt thread dangerous tendrils into his thoughts. Corrin breaks the tension between them when she stirs restlessly, breathes raspy and labored. 

But they're much too weak and the restless episodes are beginning to space themselves farther and farther apart, shorter and shorter each time. Camilla looks at him, eyes dark for an entirely different reason.

“She'll be alright if the fever breaks by tomorrow morning.” Xander whispers shakily as Camilla hums softly to soothe their sick sibling.

“And if it doesn’t?”

He doesn't answer that question.

Neither of them leave their sister that night even though their father had wanted them back before nightfall. Xander tells the king afterwards that the few flakes that’d been perpetually falling had thickened enough that travelling was too dangerous. 

He tells himself it isn't a lie. There was a blizzard. It would have been sheer stupidity to travel. But a very small corner of himself, one that Xander could never quite silence, whispers that had conditions stayed the same, he'd have stayed anyway.

(This was the first of many lies he would tell for Corrin.

(This was the first spark of rebellion, of salvation.))  
\--------------------

Corrin’s fever breaks suddenly just as they've resigned themselves to the knowledge that she might not survive the sickness. Leo had cried himself to sleep the night Xander told him, asking to go see her. His tears had set off Elise as well and Camilla had had to carry their youngest sister out of the room as Xander tried to reason with Leo. It hadn’t worked. Leo refused to talk to anyone the day afterward.Father steadfastly refused to send Corrin a doctor and they'd been dismissed early.

Camilla had been furious at their father’s apathy. And for the first time, Xander hadn’t tried to defend him.

Two days after that, when Corrin should have stopped breathing, the fever suddenly leaves her limp, little body and she blinks up at an astonished Xander sleepily before tucking her head under his chin and falling asleep. Iago thanks the blessings of the Dusk Dragon and the gods when he hears the news in a tone that makes Xander’s skin crawl. Father hums and says absolutely nothing, face blank and placid.

(He had been relieved. Xander tells himself. His father had never been good at expressing his emotions. But he remembers what King Garon looked like when Queen Katerina fell sick and even he knows he's lying to himself.)

One week after she should have died, Corrin is up and running around again, still refusing to wear shoes. One month after her miraculous recovery, she is pestering him to train her.

It's like the fever never happened and having grown up surrounded by so much grief, Xander will take this small miracle. She certainly doesn't seem to be worse for wear.

But the peace doesn’t last, it never does.


	3. i can run but never far enough

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corrin has nightmares.

All she sees is death. It coats Xander’s pale skin crimson and splashes over his armor, coating it in a layer of shine. It's a twisted parody to the way the meager light in Nohr used to reflect off his armor. Corrin stares at the white gleam as her lungs choke with the scent of iron. Her nose burns and she blinks to see red armor crackle blue with plasma, gold edging and designs bleached pale by lightning. There are phantom sparks singing as smoke and burnt flesh flicker before her eyes and the air hums with a coldness that sizzles against her skin. Something horrible slithers through the air, curling down her throat in sickly sweet tendrils and-

Corrin jerks awake, shaking.

“My lady, are you alright?” Gunter is standing at her bedside but she can’t tell him what it was that’d torn her from sleep. The images are fading already even as the sense of dread lingers on her like a second skin. Gunter cannot soothe her the way her older siblings do, but he’s enough to lull her back into sleep.

(A boy dressed in foreign clothing watches her with dead eyes and nothing Corrin does can completely erase the sight of the blind hate in his blank irises or the dark corruption wreathing around his broken body in a haze of lethal purple. 

Elise’s hair spills like gold silk across a tapestry of red and nothing Corrin tells herself eases the sheer terror and guilt that rips through her throat at the half formed image of her little sister dying in front of her.

A blue haired girl in white clothing is a constant flicker lurking just behind her eyelids. Corrin blinks and sees her vanish in a pillar of water, the dying notes of a soft melody in the air and a sad smile on her lips.

But she can never remember when she's awake.)

Her siblings arrive the next morning and Corrin is too excited to be tired. Ever since Leo began to sincerely partake in his magic studies, the frequency of her siblings’ visits have dropped. It’s steady still, but she misses them with an ache that only amplifies how alone she is in the large fortress. The hours of missing sleep eventually catch up to her though and she’s nodding off as Camilla tries to tame her flyaway hair. Her sister notices, of course she does. Corrin likes to think that if she had a mother, her mother would be like her older sister. Even if it’s difficult answering questions she doesn’t even know the answer to.

“Corrin dear, you look exhausted, has Xander been pushing you too hard?” Camilla asks from somewhere above her as deft fingers comb and tug her hair into intricate braids. Elise watches with wide eyes for a few minutes before tugging at loose strands of silver that’d escaped Camilla’s careful hands. 

Corrin shakes her head, smiling at Elise as her younger sisters attempts to copy their elder sister. It only ends up in complicated knots and a scrunched nose. She distracts Elise before the little girl begins to cry from frustration and plays with her as Camilla finishes up. Although Xander was a strict teacher, he always kept their lessons well within her limits. Her exhaustion isn’t from the physical activity at all.

Camilla doesn’t appear to be completely convinced but she doesn’t pursue the question after Corrin insists Xander has nothing to do with her tiredness. The princess only sighs before picking up the book they’d abandoned in favor of attempting to tame Corrin’s hair against the breeze that’d picked up.

She pulls both Corrin and Elise to her and the two younger girls lean in as they continue the fairytale.

(It's a story about a love that defied the celestial realms by spanning across space with a bridge of birds.

(This is a story of a desperation that defied the cosmos by spanning across time with a bridge of souls.))  
\-------------------------

Xander teaches her foreign swordplay that afternoon, buried between layers of the standard Nohrian technique.

“Why is this different?” Corrin asks because she knows it's different. Something about it resonates deep into her being, fluttering just out of reach. Xander doesn't answer, just hands her the equipment and begins the lesson. The techniques are faster, lighter (familiar) and she learns them with a speed that has surprised pleasure bleeding into her older brother’s normally stoic face.

(a flash of blue on steel. a flurry of pale, pink petals. the cadence of-)

She's (too small, too weak) too slow and blunders more than once attempting something that her body cannot handle, but each time, something coils, snaps and straightens and Xander never quite catches her as they spar. There's a split second opening and Corrin dives for it.

(an opening. a golden blade. the horrid sound of-)

Everything splutters to a stop. A memory flickers, more shadow than color, so blurry the shapes are almost indiscernible but her brain is wired to recognise what Corrin cannot. It processes the tide of grief and shock and denial before Corrin even grasps the fleeting image. 

(The horrid sound of armor crunching as it gives under a razor sharp edge. Blood stains silver vambraces as someone screams.)

Someone is screaming. It's piercing and terrified and it makes Corrin’s ears hurt and her head swim. They won't stop. The terror doesn't stop. She tries to draw breath in order to ask them to stop but that only closes her own throat up. The screaming chokes and strangles and-

Corrin’s throat burns. It's her screaming.

Purple and ash blonde swim into focus. It smells like roses and paper. Scales and ink. Polish and warm steel. It smells like home. Corrin drags in a breath of air that scrapes through her throat like claws and hiccups it back out in shaking heaves then repeats the process. Slowly, in bits and pieces, her senses span out again and Corrin turns her face away from the tear streaked metal of her brother’s armor to peek up at Camilla as her sister asks her if she is hurt anywhere, rubbing soothing circles into her back.

Corrin manages to answer through her hiccups, denying any injury, but when she tries to explain what happened, something stirs. Shhh, it whispers and velvet tendrils creep up the inside of her throat. Her voice is strangled before it can even form. Nothing she does lets her finish the sentence so Corrin buries her face into her brother’s warm shoulder as Camilla’s worried tone blends into Xander’s quiet rumble. Corrin isn’t really paying attention until Xander mentions speaking to their father about this latest development. Her heart splutters in her chest and a sudden sense of cold horror makes Corrin raise her head. She ends up not having to voice her objection though because Camilla disagrees almost right away.

“Leo learns offensive magic and sits in on the war councils just because he showed some aptitude in those disciplines. If Father hears about this, what do you think he'll do?”

The Crown Prince falls silent at this, looking conflicted. Corrin sits up a little to catch his attention.

“Please don’t tell Father, big brother.”

She sees Xander’s mouth tighten and drops her eyes to pick nervously at her fingernails. The air is tense and claustrophobic and Corrin can feel bile roiling just behind her throat when her brother sighs. Corrin feels him relax in a shift of armor moments before he promises silence as he strokes back the hair sticking to her face. It’s a gentle, soothing rhythm and Corrin falls asleep to the feeling, suddenly exhausted beyond words.


End file.
